


The Battle Outside Raging

by Moorishflower



Series: Nerdstuck! [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Character Death, F/M, Human/Troll Relationship, M/M, Nerdstuck!, Revolution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viva la revolution, Nerdstucks!</p><p>The year is 1992. Across the country, the first faint stirrings of revolution echo among the warmblood masses. The Condesce sits in Tyrian House, a tyrant waiting to be overthrown. The times are changing. In Houston, Bro Strider, DJ, languishes in a cheap apartment and works clubs that he hates just to make rent, unaware that there is anything more or less wrong with the world than there was yesterday, or the day before.</p><p>Until Meenah Peixes dances into his life.</p><p>(There is an ASK BLOG associated with this series, where you can give scenarios or prompts to the author and ask the characters and author questions, and it can be found here: http://askthenerdstucks.tumblr.com/)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red Heart, Black Club

**Author's Note:**

> This story is, first and foremost, about change. Not just revolutionary change, but personal growth and discovery as well. That said, I've done my best to not completely ignore Bro's experiences as a predominantly gay man in the 1990's, and I've also tried to handle his own broadening sexuality in as tasteful a way as possible. He's not suddenly 'turning straight,' but rather exploring a previously undiscovered facet of his sexuality, one in which a personal connection matters more than outward physical sex or expressed gender.
> 
> If at any point you see an issue with the story, please let me know, and I will do my best to change it!

_Come senators, congressmen_  
 _Please heed the call_  
 _Don't stand in the doorway_  
 _Don't block up the hall_  
 _For he that gets hurt_  
 _Will be he who has stalled_  
 _There's a battle outside ragin'_  
 _That will soon shake your windows_  
 _And rattle your walls_  
 _For the times they are a-changin'._ \- Troll P. Diddy

 

The very last thing you hear her say is “Fuck you, hagfish.” You think that’s sort of appropriate, all things considered.

~

Your name is Dirk Strider. You fucking hate the name ‘Dirk,’ so for as long as you can remember everyone’s just called you ‘Bro.’ You’re twenty-one, and this morning you had a beer and Lucky Charms for breakfast.

You really like puppets. You really _don’t_ like the Houston club scene.

The problem with a. only having a high school diploma, and b. being a relatively unknown DJ is that you can’t afford to be picky when it comes to the jobs you take. So if some terrible disco joint wants you to come and spin C+C Music Factory’s ‘greatest shits’ then yeah, you’re sort of obligated to go and do that if they’re willing to pay you. It’s either that or sit at home and stare at the blank wall where your TV used to be.

So you pack up your gear and you head down to the Snake Pit, the fucking Snake Pit, what the hell kind of a name is that, seriously. But the place is jumping, especially for a Thursday night, and the bouncer nods at you as you wrestle all your shit out of the back of your truck. He doesn’t offer to help. Asshole.

You get yourself set up so the other DJ can go off shift; a beskirted girl at the bar offers you drinks in the hopes that you’ll fuck her. You haven’t been attracted to a girl since high school, but you don’t have the heart to tell her that. Plus, free drinks.

You’re pleasantly buzzed by the time you take your seat in the DJ tower, the prior guy’s set spinning its last pre-recorded death rattles out onto the mindless dance floor. You adjust your shades and set to with some Prince & the N.P.G., mix a little of Frankie Knuckles’ “Whistle Song” in there, too. The crowd goes fuckin’ nuts, people all bumping and grinding and god knows what else.

You fucking hate this music. All you want is your paycheck. Then you can go home and go to sleep, dream of acid house and beats that are ill but don’t make you _feel_ ill. You’ve got an interview for a second job tomorrow, something in retail, you can’t even remember--you wrote the details down and stuck them to your fridge. You’ll see them when you get home, and again when you go to make coffee the next morning. It might not pay as much as the DJ gig, but it’ll be steadier, and God knows the money you’re making now isn’t enough to keep you in figurative hookers and blow.

There’s a minor commotion near the back wall, over by the ladies’ bathroom. The dance floor crowd ripples and parts around someone moving on through, like schools of fish making way for a shark.

You’re switching songs when you first see her, punk braids and piercings all down her eyebrow, glasses slid up to her forehead and her fins all flared out. You scratch a record for the hell of it and her eyes snap to you, purple like a sunset, like foxgloves out the backyard when you were growing up, and you are utterly certain that she must have snuck in. The bouncers wouldn’t have let a troll in on a _good_ day, let alone one so obviously looking for trouble, because this is Houston, Texas in 1992, and it’s literally only been six years since trolls were legally declared official U.S. citizens, even though they’ve been around since nearly the turn of the fucking century.

But she bounces along with the music and stares at you and you think _yeah I can work with this_.

You scrap your original idea (Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam) and instead go for some Drexciya. “Deep Sea Dweller” has been floating around (ha ha) for a couple weeks and you’re psyched to get your mix on with it, and since there’s a finned troll out in the crowd you figure now’s as good a time as any. The crowd stops jumpin’ quite as hard, though there are still a few enthusiastic dancers. You aren’t looking at them, though.

You’re looking at her. She’s still staring up at you, but now her mouth is a wide barracuda grin, like a million needle-point teeth on display, and she’s got her slender hands clapping together like she’s just too fucking excited to contain it. Everyone around her gives her a wide berth as she starts to dance, shaking her groove thing all over the place. Her hair whips around, cat-o-nine-tails with fuchsia beads and baubles woven in; she’s a whirling dervish of energy and aggressive dance moves. She’d be as at home in a mosh pit as she is here in a club.

You see the backup bouncer coming before she does, scratch the record again to get her attention and then tilt your head in trouble’s direction. She’s not fast enough; a beefy hand reaches out and grabs her by the collar of her tee, hauls her down. You know the dude manhandling her, he’s six feet even, so she’s got to have at least two inches on him. You were aware trolls got fuckin’ huge, but you’ve never seen one up close before, you’ve only seen them on the TV, innocuous footage of bystanders on crime scenes, passers-by, gawkers. Less often, trolls standing on the lawn of the White House, protesting for voter’s rights, the right to marry, as if marriage is the important thing when the Condesce still has a stranglehold on lowblood personhood.

The girl on the floor only lets herself be dragged for an inch, maybe less, before she whips her head forward and slams her grinning mug into the bouncer’s face. Blood splatters; he looks like someone threw a balloon full of ketchup at him. There’s red on her mouth, just a little smear, and she licks it away.

All hell breaks loose. You keep up the music, because that’s your job, and this is the best entertainment you’ve ever had and still gotten paid to watch it. Bouncer is down on his knees, clutching his bleeding nose and shouting, though you can’t make out what he says. Troll girl is standing over him and grinning; some asshole from the bar grabs a near-empty bottle of Jose Cuervo and swings it like a police baton. Troll girl dodges, and glass shatters on the dance floor. Frightened and disoriented clubbers scatter in all directions, some herding towards the doors, some of them shuffling along the wall like if they make themselves small and slow enough they won’t be noticed. You start to play Yakety Sax; troll girl seems to find this hilarious, because she starts cackling.

Reinforcements arrive from the back, two beefy dudes that you know aren’t employees but hang around the club’s owner all the same, and the on-duty bouncer pokes his head in the front door and starts heading for the center of the carnage. She’s outnumbered and outmuscled, even if she’s got super troll strength or whatever, but she puts up a fight all the same. The comedic strains of Yakety Sax cover up the worst of the fight noises, screams and shouts and troll girl laughing away. She’s a blur of motion, as elegant in strife as she was when she was just dancing, whip-crack crazed energy, and even though you haven’t legitimately tried to pick up a chick since you were seventeen you still think _maybe?_ Because God knows your preference for cock doesn’t really go down all that well here in Texas, slightly-more-liberal Houston or not, but you remember when you honestly liked ladies, too, liked their curves and their softness, before you realized there was a second option.

Troll girl goes to smash her face into Possibly Hired Goon 2’s mouth. The on-duty bouncer picks up a bar stool and brings it slamming down, inelegant and final, on her head. She drops like a stone, and you think _welp, that’s it, entertainment’s over, call the hospital and--_

One of them kicks her.

You don’t even see which one, just a foot blurring out and a sudden jolt through her swimmer-thin body. You cut the music and lean your head out the tower, and everything is deathly silent save for the meaty thud of iron-toed boots against troll girl’s side.

Something bends and gives and _cracks_ , loud as a thunderclap, and you are abruptly on the dance floor with no memory of precisely how you got there (did you jump? you must have). Years of being the skinny fuckin’ weirdo have taught you well: you catch the next kick with your thigh, let it glance near-harmlessly off your bunched muscles. Your shades make everything seem darker; to you, the blood dripping from troll girl’s mouth is tinged and shadowed.

“That’s enough,” you say, and Goon 1 snarls, wordless, and throws a punch at your head. You remember this type from as far back as kindergarten, and you remember the day you decided to stop being the skinny weirdo and started aiming for _fucking ripped_ weirdo instead. You catch his fist in yours and squeeze down until joints pop and the guy’s angry sneer becomes a grimace of pain. The on-duty bouncer seems to abruptly remember who he’s dealing with. He backs off with his hands raised.

“I _said_ , that’s enough.”

“Boss is gonna be pissed if we let this bitch ruin his club,” Goon 2 spits. “You a fuckin’ troll-lover, Strider? Some sorta alien pervert? Back the fuck off.”

“Yeah, I’m thinkin’ no.”

“You piece of shit. Boss hears about this and you’ll never DJ here again. You’ll never spin in all of _Houston_ again, you get that? You’re done, Strider. Finished.”

“Sure thing, chief.” You let go of his hand, bend down and haul one of troll girl’s arms over your shoulder. “I got you. Now let me out of this fucked-up rat trap, before I smear your jellied ass all over the dance floor.”

And he knows you could do it, too, even hampered by a semi-conscious girl hanging off your shoulder. He knows it, and he knows that you know it, and finally with a sound like a morbidly obese demon opening the doors to Hell he snarls again and steps out of your way.

“I’ll be back for my shit tomorrow,” you say, troll girl sloppy limp against your side and the cool night breeze blowing your hair from your sweaty forehead. “You even think about damaging any of it and I’ll sue your shitty club for every overpriced-Mai-Tai penny it’s ever made since its first Satan-ordained inception, you got me?”

Parting line delivered in a sufficiently badass manner, you gather up your floppy, oversized mannequin and haul her nonchalantly from the club.

Oh God, what the fuck are you _doing_.


	2. Paler? I Hardly Knew Her

You try to bring her to the hospital.

‘Try’ being the operative word, because about halfway there she slits open her eyes and says “No fuckin’ doctors homebuoy,” and then she closes them again and either passes out or falls asleep, you can’t really tell. You’re pretty sure her ribs are cracked (do trolls have ribs?), maybe even broken (can trolls break bones?), but it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with at your place, with some ice and compression bandages, both of which you have. So you turn your truck around and head back the way you came, past the clubs and the grocery stores and finally past the towering ghetto apartment blocks, bars on the windows that aren’t broken, graffiti on the walls. You park on the street and haul her up three flights of stairs to your unbelievably crappy one-bedroom, locking the door behind you, shutting and covering all the windows.

You try to remember what you learned about trolls in high school. Which is, effectively, nothing. They’re not worth teaching about, third-class citizens behind women and Blacks and Latinos, and it’s only the fact that they’re still relatively rare that’s allowed them to slide through life without being relegated to _trolls only_ water fountains. They mostly stay in their little enclaves, out in the California mountains, or in Middle of Nowhere, Arizona. There’s whole communities out there, highbloods lording it over midbloods lording it over lowbloods, this whole weird hemocaste system that makes no goddamn sense to you, but is apparently how they’ve done things for millions of years despite its inherently high fucked-up attribute.

And enforcing it, of course, Her Imperial Condescension herself, safely holed up in Tyrian House in Virginia, running things however the fuck she wants, right under the President’s nose. Everyone knows it. No one has enough proof to accuse her.

Trolls tend to disappear when they oppose the Condesce.

You lay the girl down on your couch, thinking maybe today is the day when that stupid spring will decide to magically pop back into place and not give whoever lies down on it a crick in their back, and then go to your tiny bathroom to retrieve your first-aid kit. If there’s anything you’ve learned in life, it’s that you should be prepared to have the shit beat out of you at any moment. Also, puppets unnerve people. That became an asset in and of itself at one point.

You unroll some bandages and head back out; troll girl is still lying there, breathing noisily through her mouth. The difference is that you can tell she’s awake now. Her face is scrunched up with pain and her lips are purple-tinged where she’s bitten them. You take off your hat, thinking, maybe, it will make you look a bit more accessible, and then you crouch down next to the couch. The first-aid kit lies open on your knee.

“Hey,” you say, and one brilliantly purple eye opens, staring at you. Her glasses are askew on the bridge of her nose; they must’ve slid down while you were carrying her. Frankly, it’s a miracle they didn’t get broken in the fight. Without thinking you reach to adjust them. She watches you, wary as an animal in a cage, but she doesn’t kick or cuss you out, so you guess you’re safe.

“The fuck are you,” she wheezes eventually. You figure that must be a ‘who’ rather than a ‘what.’

“Bro Strider. DJ, all around badass, at your service.”

“You were at the club.”

“Yep.”

“You were mixin’ some sweet beats, weren’t you?”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

She snickers, then almost immediately seizes up, groaning. “Ah, shit, my _chest_.”

“Hold still.” You put the flat of your hand on her chest, pushing her down a little. She freezes; it’s only afterwards that you realize how that might have looked to her. How it might have felt. “Your ribs are cracked at least, maybe broken. I can patch you up, but I don’t want to be playing Fisher Price’s My First Hospital Visit on you if you don’t want me to.”

She gives this a good ponder. Another twinge from her ribs seems to make up her mind. “Nah, buoy, it’s a’ight. You do what you gotta.”

You wonder what’s up with the nautical puns. Maybe it’s a troll thing. Maybe it’s a punk-braids-piercings-girl thing. “I gotta lift up your shirt is what I gotta.”

“Ugh, knew you was just tryna get at my rumble spheres.”

“I don’t even know what the fuck those are.”

“You about to find out.”

You shrug. She probably means her tits. God, trolls have weird names for everything.

You set yourself down on the floor properly, holding the kit open on your lap as you gently work her shirt up to her armpits. She’s wearing a super simple bra, just stretchy white fabric like she’s about to go jogging or something, and you leave that alone for the moment. You are going to have to figure out the best way to go about this.

“You think you can get your shirt off on your own?”

She can, evidently, because, with only a minimum of groaning and snarling, she manages to get it over her head. The bra is a different matter. When she tries to pull it off she goes still and stiff as a board. Probably it’s helping a little, keeping her ribs a bit more compressed than nothing at all, but she can’t wear both it _and_ the bandages. You retrieve a pair of scissors from the kit and set to the bra with them. “What the fuck you think you’re doin’?”

“I’d think that was obvious.”

“That’s my gland hoister you’re cuttlein’ up!”

“Jesus, is that what you actually call them? That’s fucking hilarious. Sorry, chica, the gland hoister’s got to go.”

“It’s the only one I got, you basshole!”

You pause. “Oh.” Far be it for you to deprive a lady of her one and only bra. Plus, she’s gone all purple in the face, like admitting to it has embarrassed her. You know the feeling. “Fine. I’ll get you a new one.”

“I don’t want your fuckin’ charity, human!”

“Charity and taped ribs or no charity and untaped ribs, take your pick.”

She glowers at you for like three whole minutes, then finally moves her arms out of the way. Snip snip snip, go the scissors. _Yo Bro check me out you haven’t seen any of me for years_ , go the titties as you peel the bra away from her chest. She doesn’t have nipples, which is super fucking weird, but you’re not focused on those, though. You’re more worried about the dark purple bruises forming on her sides and chest. Those look painful as all shit. “Can you take aspirin?”

“Yeah, why?”

“‘Cause I’m gonna give you some. It won’t help much, but anything’s better than nothing. Take a deep breath.”

She does, and as she does so something sort of...flutters, along her side. You ignore it for now, instead wrapping the bandages around her chest while she’s still braced for it. You pull tight, and you can feel the creak in her ribs that means that something definitely is giving more than it ought to, and then you pin the bandages in place. She exhales, and her side flutters again. Holy shit, what the hell are those?

“What’s the matter?” She tilts her head at you. “You ain’t never seen gills before?”

“I’ve never seen a _troll_ before, except on the TV. Back when I still had one.”

“Just don’t touch ‘em, they’re sensitive as all shell.”

You dutifully avoid touching them. They look weird anyways, sort of...pouting open and then closed again, a vivid fuchsia on the inside. Instead, you tuck your finger beneath the bandages to test how tight they are. Her skin feels like warm suede. You make sure the bandages aren’t about to cut off her circulation anywhere, and then hastily get your hands back down where those huge-ass shark teeth can’t take a chunk out of them. “All done. Feeling any better?”

She sucks in a cautious breath, and then smiles slowly. “Yeah, way betta.”

“Cool. Be right back, I’ll get you some aspirin and water.”

You leave her with the first aid kit, shuffling to your tiny kitchen, feeling like an old man. You still have to get up early and go to your interview tomorrow. It’s more important now than ever, considering you’ve just blacklisted yourself for every club in Houston. The guy who runs that place, calls himself Slick, he’s got a lot of sway in the club scene, if only because he owns as many guns and knives as he does hired goons. You’re glad he wasn’t there tonight, because you’re a pro with a sword but guns are so far from your thing that they might as well be on the moon.

You fill a chipped glass with tepid water (there’s something wrong with the plumbing, it’s either ‘volcanic magma hot’ or ‘Titanic glacier cold’) and fish the bottle of aspirin out of the junk drawer, bringing both with you back out to the living room. Troll girl is exactly where you left her, except now she’s gotten hold of the first aid kit and has it open on her stomach, rummaging through it. “Something else hurting, or are you just being nosy?”

“I think I got a right to snoop all things considered,” she counters. You shrug, sitting again and holding out your hands.

“Here. Water, aspirin. Let me know if you need more of either.”

She eyes you, and where before she seemed wary, now she seems...resigned. Suspicious, still, but aware that she doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Which sucks, because it’s not like you’re going to chain her up in your basement and make her rub lotion all over herself. You don’t even have a basement.

Her fins flare out, and you realize that they’re semi-connected to her ears, so the whole ensemble moves at once. Then she snatches the pills and the glass away. She guzzles water like she’s been stranded in a desert for a month. You wonder if that’s part and parcel to the sea puns and gills thing. Finally, she lowers the glass, and mumbles something. Keen as your hearing has to be to mix the beats that you do, you still don’t manage to catch it. “Huh?”

“I _said_...” She takes a deep breath and winces when it tugs at her ribs. “Water you gonna ask me to do?”

“Still not getting what you’re asking.”

“For all you’re doin’!” She gestures at her bandages, the first aid kit, the now-empty glass. “I ain’t stupid, nobody gonna help a troll in this shell-hole ‘less they get somefin outta it, too. And I’mma tell you right now, I ain’t pailin’ you.”

“Assuming that ‘pailing’ is some weird sex euphemism, good, I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Oh.” That seems to set her back a bit, but she rallies her indignation admirably. “I ain’t givin’ you no organs or skin samples or nofin either.”

“Jesus, what sort of humans do you hang around?”

“I try not to anymore.” And then, muttered, “I was just gonna sneak in an’ nick a drink.”

“You picked the wrong club for that.”

“You think I don’t know that? _Fuck_.” She curls her hand around her torso, cringing back into the couch. She looks so, so angry, and so cornered, not even _scared_ , really. You don’t know if this girl’s ever been scared. She’s got the sort of bigger than life, all-consuming bravado that reminds you of yourself before you discovered that amping the weirdness factor up to eleven did the trick just as nicely, and more adequately suited your own interests.

Luckily, she doesn’t seem to have noticed the half-finished puppets lying around. You still don’t know what you’re going to do with them, but it’s a hobby, and it keeps your life from becoming a sucking black hole of shit, so you guess they fulfill their purpose.

You shift awkwardly, wondering if you should be trying to...console her or something. She’s not crying, though. That’s good, you don’t know what you’d do if she cried. Probably go and have a slow mental breakdown in your bedroom. “You, uh. You got anyone you want me to call?” Silence. “Any family? Friends?” More silence.

And then, in a surprisingly calm, defiant voice, “Yeah, if you ain’t gonna charge for usin’ your phone.”

“The fuck would I do that for, electricity’s included in the rent and I barely use the damn thing except for business calls.”

She flaps a hand at you. “Waterever. Still waitin’ for the other flipper to drop.”

“Well, stop it, you’re making me paranoid.”

All this getting up and down, Jesus. Still, you go to your bedroom and get your cordless phone, bringing it back out and tossing it to her. She catches it one-handed. Nice. “I need to go to bed. Call whoever you want. If you ruin any of my shit I’ll hunt you down.”

She raises an eyebrow at you. God, she’s...she’s so fucking _sassy_. She is basically an asshole, you have never seen someone manage to be both so full of class and yet so fucking wrecked at the same time.

You retreat into your bedroom before you can contemplate skipping your interview.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The method that Bro uses to bind Meenah's ribs is a huge no-no because it makes it hard to breathe and compresses everything, so don't do it please okay thank you!


	3. Are you there, Bro? It's me, Meenah.

When you go to make coffee the next morning, the girl is still on your couch. She’s discovered the closet where you keep all your extra blankets and pillows, apparently, because she’s swaddled in so many of them that all you can see are her horns and the very tips of her frilled ears.

You get yourself ready for your interview while the coffee percolates, suit and tie and the whole nine yards, because even if it’s a dayshift at 7-11 you are goddamn-well going to look your best for the interview. In the living room, you spot movement beneath the pile of bedding, your guest’s undoubtedly keen nose scenting the distinctive smell of Strider-brand coffee, which is to say, Folger’s that you’ve mixed with a little bit of that fancy hazelnut shit to create Folgernut, preferred morning beverage of the discerning gentleman on a budget. You unearth an extra coffee mug from beneath a pile of half-finished puppets (why does your apartment have so many piles of shit, when did that even happen) and leave it on the kitchen counter for troll girl to find when she properly wakes up. You’re given to understand that they’re nocturnal, so maybe she won’t even be awake until tonight, long after you’re done with the interview.

You leave the coffee on anyways.

The interview goes about as well as can be expected for you, which is to say that you don’t manage to set anything on fire or cut anyone’s limbs off, but you can tell without asking that you are royally pissing off the interviewer. You try to tone back your sense of humor, you really do, especially when it’s important shit like this, but your natural Strider charm just sort of bleeds through. Before you know it, you’ve done something fucked up, like mentioned your brief stint as a nude model (you were eighteen and you needed the money for your first apartment, a shithole compared to this one), or brought up the interviewer’s obvious and obviously unironic toupee, things like that.

You’re given a polite ‘we’ll call you’ and unceremoniously shown to the door. Cool. No biggie. You tool around downtown Houston for like two hours, visiting local establishments of varying levels of repute and quasi-employed illegal immigrants. You speak enough Spanish to communicate that you’re looking for work when you run into a language barrier. You fill out a couple of applications and then drive by the Exxon to fill up your tank and grab some snacks from the Stop n Shop. You don’t know what trolls eat (or even if she’ll still be there when you get back), so you also pick up some Taco Bell. Your significantly-less-fat wallet would sigh if it were capable, but it’s not, and you drive home in silence. The door is still locked, but as you fish your key out of your pocket you can hear voices on the other side.

There are now two trolls in your living room.

There’s your troll girl, sitting up in her pile of blankets with her hair all fuzzed out and her glasses slightly askew, and she’s nursing a steaming mug and wearing an expression that says she would rather be anywhere but here, thanks, but as long as she doesn’t have a choice in the matter she’s going to mooch off your coffee and steal your underwear when you aren’t looking. The girl standing next to her has dainty little cat’s-eye glasses and a blue dress. Her horns are different, one forked and the other hooked, and while she’s shorter than your troll girl, she’s definitely got a more rockin’ ass. They seem to be in the middle of a heated discussion when you walk in, but they immediately fall silent when they spot you. You set the Taco Bell bags down on the table as a peace offering; someone (looking at you, fish girl) has removed the cheap faux-suede cover you got to drape over it, revealing all the dents, stains, cracks, and other unsightly blemishes that are sort of part and parcel to furniture you pick up off the side of the road in college towns. Most of your furniture is like that, but hey, you didn’t have to drop $500 on a sofa, go you.

“‘Sup,” you say, and troll girl (shit, there’s two of them now, _your_ troll girl) points at you and says “He’s the basshole what cut up my gland hoister!”

“ _Meenah_.”

Second troll girl’s voice has the slightly exasperated, but otherwise carefully regulated tone of someone who is used to both Pointing Things Out and Handling Unreasonable People. Where your troll girl is all devilish enthusiasm and punkish glee, this girl is cool and collected as one of those flowers that catch rainwater in the Amazon. You automatically like her, even though you know, logically, that she probably has the type of personality that will make a dude like you want to punch yourself in your own face seven times a day.

“I apologize,” second troll girl says. “Meenah is very good at overreacting. I assume that you are the one who rescued her from her dire fate the previous evening?”

“I kept a couple dudes from beating the shit out of her, sure.”

“Excellent! My name is Aranea Serket; this, as you may have surmised, is Meenah Peixes.”

“Bro Strider. You ladies want Taco Bell?”

“Cod, yes, I’m _starvin’_.” Meenah makes grabby hands at the grease-spotted bags; you nudge one of them towards her and she tears into it faster than a shark into a bucket of chum. Aranea rolls her eyes like she’s practicing for the Fuck This Olympics.

“Thank you,” she says, and takes a step closer. She’s maybe an inch shorter than you; still tall, but now within the realm of ‘comfortable,’ whereas Meenah has like three inches on you. You aren’t saying your manly pride is at stake, but your manly pride is definitely at stake. “I have no doubts that she would be dead if it were not for your intervention. Not only that, but you have tended to her wounds and allowed her to stay with you. You are an exceptional human, Mr. Strider.”

Woah, all this flattery is making you a bit uncomfortable. You raise your hands to stave off any more. “It’s cool, it’s cool. I got you. Just trying to not be an asshole, you know.”

“No, I don’t think you do ‘get me.’” She peers at you over the rims of her glasses. Her eyes are a light cerulean color, nearly the same as her dress. “If you had not been there, she would have died. There are no doubts in my mind about this. Meenah is abrasive at the best of times, but when she gets it into her thinkpan to cause trouble there is nearly no stopping her...and most humans are not as accepting as you seem to be.”

Morbid curiosity makes you ask, “Is it really that bad?” Aranea’s silence is your only answer, but it’s really all you need. Texas is about two years and one small crisis away from rounding up a bunch of idiots with guns and having a good old-fashioned lynching party, with trolls as the honored guests. The _Keep America White!_ bumper stickers you used to see have now mingled with ones that say _Keep America Human!_ and _You’re in America, Not Alternia: SPEAK ENGLISH!_. Even Houston, liberal mecca that it is, has more humans-only establishments than not.

Aranea regards you sadly. Meenah snarfs all the filling out of a burrito supreme.

“She’s got a couple of cracked ribs,” you say, eventually. “They’ll heal on their own, but the bandages have to come off after a bit. It’ll hurt like fuck, but it’s worse to leave them on all the time. She got anyone who can make sure she’s doing okay?”

“Sittin’ right here, human.”

“Yes,” Aranea says, casting a glare in Meenah’s direction. It softens almost immediately. “Myself and a few others are in a position to make certain that she heals properly. I doubt it will be long, seadwellers heal exceptionally quickly.”

“Seadweller? Is that what’s up with the...?” You gesture vaguely towards your neck. Meenah, her mouth full of burrito, flares her fins out in response, velvet grey speckled with bright purple-pink spots, the scalloped edges fading up into her pointed ears. Aranea touches her hand to her mouth.

“Oh! I assumed, given your easy acceptance...I thought you were, perhaps, an academic...”

“I glubbin’ _told_ you he was a DJ!”

“It would not be the first time you have confused one human occupation for another.”

“ _It was one time_.”

“Ladies, ladies.” Two sets of eyes snap to you. “No fighting in Casa de Strider. Wanna explain why you thought I was an academic?” Not like you don’t have your scholarly pursuits. Robotics used to be a huge thing for you, but, unfortunately, it’s the sort of field that either pays big or doesn’t pay at all, and the world apparently just isn’t ready for a rapping brobot.

Aranea pushes her glasses up along her nose. “Primarily, those who are accepting of and even helpful to our cause are those who have a vested interest in the study of xenomorpholgy, xenobiology, applied xenolinguistics...”

“He gets the idea, Serket, stop flippin’ your talk curtains.”

“Your cause?” Aranea’s eyes immediately go bright. Meenah groans; you have the feeling that you have just unleashed a torrent of...something.

“Trollism!” She sings. “We believe every troll has the right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness--”

“For cod’s sake, Serket.”

“--we are an organization dedicated to ensuring that trolls are provided with all of the same basic rights and advantages as humans--”

“Shut up, he don’t _care_.”

“--such as the right to marry and intermarry, the right to vote, better schooling, the removal of segregated establishments, the declassification of burgundy through greenbloods as ‘lowbloods’--”

Meenah throws an empty burrito wrapper at Aranea’s head as she finishes with, “And, of course, the removal of the Condesce as sole arbiter of troll-specific rights and issues.”

“ _What_.”

“She’s livin’ in a fantasy world,” Meenah says. “Don’t listen to her.” She flops back on your couch, blankets now falling around her waist and legs. You note, with some interest, that she doesn’t have a navel. “A’ight, can we _go_ now, Serket, I got shit to do an’ fish to fry.”

“Have you even thanked him, Meenah? He saved your life.”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks for kissin’ my booboos betta, I owe you, can we _go_.”

“Could kiss more than that.” Holy shit, did that just come out of your mouth? Damn your Strider charm, all taking over and making you take opportunities that you really shouldn’t even be going near, especially when you aren’t actually interested. She’s a cool girl and all, but you’ve got no intentions of whipping your junk out for her, so it’s a moot point anyways.

Meenah is grinning at you, though. Barracuda grin with too many teeth and sharp eyes and her fins all flared out. “Might take you up on that, homebuoy.” Aranea looks between the two of you like she’s watching a tennis match. You feel like you’ve just managed to dig yourself into your own grave. Go you. You belatedly think that maybe you ought to inform her that you’re gay, but Meenah is already standing and stretching, the blankets falling down around her feet. “Where’d you put my shirt, DJ? I got important plaices to be.”

“Dumped it in the washer. Should be dry by now, but I doubt all the blood’s out.” Most of it hadn’t even been hers, and your washer is a clunky piece of shit that you paid some Korean lady a hundred bucks for. You don’t even have a dryer, you just hang everything in the window and let the sun do its work.

Meenah lopes past you to the water closet down the hall, and in the moment of silence between her exit and her reappearance, Aranea says, “I do not mean to...besmirch the heroism of your actions, but...may I ask your intentions?”

“Huh?”

“Regarding Meenah. She informed me that you did not expect...payment, in return for your help, but...”

Oh. Oh, fuck, she’s referencing your ill-timed and joking offer to _kiss it betta_ , in Meenah’s words. Or maybe she’s just expressing her own completely understandable skepticism. It doesn’t even really matter. You hold up your hands and say, “No intentions, I swear on my grandma’s honor.” Your grandmother had no honor. She helped her best dudefriend run bootleg rum down from Canada in the 1890s and you’re pretty sure she once killed a guy in a bar fight and got away with it. Aranea doesn’t need to know that. “Besides, I’m gay.”

She stares at you, uncomprehending.

“You know. Homosexual.”

Still nothing.

“I...only like men?”

Finally, she shakes her head and says, “Human sexual practices continue to baffle me.”

“What, there weren’t gay bars on Alternia?”

“None that I have heard tell of. It simply seems a waste to limit yourself to one gender expression. Or else an extreme arrogance.”

“What.”

“A’ight, gills an’ buoys, let’s get this show on the road, ‘fore I wither an’ die of boredom.” Meenah emerges from the water closet, dressed and raring to go. She grabs Aranea by the arm and starts pulling her towards the door. With her other hand she grabs the half-empty bag of Taco Bell.

“Ah, my apologies, Mr. Strider, but Meenah is right, we really ought to inform our associates that she is neither dead nor dying. Kankri will be pleased to hear that you have made a local ally.”

Meenah sticks her tongue out at you. It’s grey-fuchsia and very long. “I’mma take you up on that offer, Mr. DJ, you watch yo ass.”

Aranea coughs. “Uncouth as that was, it might be wise to exchange contact information. Here.” She fishes in the pocket of her dress, and then offers you a business card. “We can be reached at this number. Should you happen to visit and find us unavailable, you may tell whoever is there that you are an associate of Meenah’s.”

You take the card. The front says, in bold, bright red letters, _Society for the Advancement of Warmblood Personhood_ , and, below that, a phone and fax number, and an address. You flip it over. On the back, someone has doodled what looks like a tentacle minus suckers. Aranea’s cheeks turn blue. “Ah, yes, Mituna must have gotten into my card holder and...” She coughs delicately. “It hardly matters. Please, do not hesitate to contact us, Mr. Strider. And if you find yourself feeling especially sympathetic to our cause, we would relish the involvement of more humans. I believe your kind will be integral to ending the Condesce’s reign of terror.”

“Blah blah, we done yet, come _on_.” Meenah tugs Aranea’s shoulder and starts to steer her towards the door again. “Hit me up if you ever in the neighborhood, Strider, you’re more finteresting than fuckin’ Kankri, that’s for shore.”

She finally ushers Aranea out the door, and you’re once again alone in your apartment.

You’re sort of surprised. You suppose you never realized how lonely you were until you weren’t.


	4. Kankri's All You Can Eat Social Justice Buffet

As little as a month ago, you would say that you had been doing pretty good business. Your phone wasn’t ringing off the hook or anything, but rarely did a week go by where you didn’t at least have one gig to play. Houston has no shortage of clubs raring for some shitty pseudo-dance pop, after all.

But now it’s been two weeks since you kept Slick’s goons from beating the shit out of Meenah, and your phone has been silent. Utterly and completely silent. You can practically hear the death rattle of your DJing career, and it sounds like Meenah Peixes’s cackling laughter. It’s a testament to exactly how awesome you are that you don’t hold it against her. It wasn’t her fault that Slick happens to employ lumbering fuckwads as his personal escorts.

You go to two more interviews. The last one is actually sort of promising, nothing fancy, working produce at a local grocery mart. Five bucks an hour and a guaranteed twenty-six hours a week, which isn’t bad when your rent is three-hundred a month. The guy seems to like you well enough, and he invites you for a follow-up interview in two weeks, which you’re pretty sure you’ll take him up on.

You go home and you spin some beats, work on your sample record; as promised, you went back to the Snake Pit and picked up your tech. Not a scratch on it, thank God, and no one had hassled you on your way in or out. The Strider rep still works its magic sometimes, even if it can’t get you a fucking job.

In the evenings, you go for long walks. You live in a shitty part of Houston, but it’s nothing compared to the neighborhoods you end up strolling through, ghettos that make your little corner of the city look like upstate New York, where hard-eyed neo-Nazis hang out in front of pharmacies and mirthful cultists sit on the curbs and slam ridiculous quantities of Faygo. Sometime around the end of week two, you find yourself wandering through one of the largest of the local troll neighborhoods, what’s colloquially known as the Little Empire. Suddenly, all the signs are in Alternian, weird, spiky script that doesn’t look anything like letters, and the streets don’t start to bustle until the sun sinks below the horizon. Grey-skinned figures emerge from their hives and their storefronts, setting up sample tables, visiting friends, chatting, shopping. It’s like every other busy little city street you’ve ever been down, except all the people are aliens, and they give you a wide berth as you pass.

You’ve never been the one people were afraid of, before. If they messed with you, sure, but not...naturally. Instinctively. A white creature that looks like a fucked-up penguin leads a young troll to the other side of the street to avoid you. A girl with spiky, y-shaped horns ducks into a doorway and stares at you as you pass her.

You stop in what you’re pretty sure is a restaurant, where a troll with warm brown eyes and floppy hair seats you by the window with shaking hands and flickering glances, like he’s worried you’ll lash out at him at any given moment. He brings out a dusty, yellowed menu that looks like it hasn’t been used since Johnson was in office, and he says, in thickly-accented English, “If you need anything, you will let me know? I will bring water for you.” He disappears before you can reassure him that you aren’t going to rip his ribcage out and eat his kidneys, but you get the feeling that even if you had, he wouldn’t believe you.

The menu is written in stilted English, but most of the food is made of such incomprehensible ingredients that it hardly matters. Alternian subsistence farms are given patches of land well-outside of human city limits, but a lot of people get around that by growing or raising whatever they need on their own. You suspect this restaurant is one of those places; it’s saturated with the smell of oil and lard, but, beneath that, there’s a green-growing smell, and something vaguely animal. They’ve probably got a little garden on the property, or a pen with some weird Alternian fauna in it. Hell, maybe both.

The waiter returns with a pitcher of water and a glass, and you realize you’ve been staring at the menu without actually reading it. Quickly, you search for something that looks even vaguely human-friendly. You don’t know what grubsauce is. You don’t want to know.

“Whenever you would like to order, sir, I’m at your command.”

Well, gosh, you’re pretty sure that couldn’t be phrased any creepier. You push your shades back up along the bridge of your nose and say, “What do you like?”

“E-excuse me?”

“Well, I mean, is there anything you’d recommend? Help a bro out, dude, I am tragically unhip to Alternian cuisine. This shit won’t fly, can’t have a Strider being culturally unaware, that’s just _sad_.”

“I...I...” He stares at you, breath stuttering a little, until eventually he blinks, slow, like a cat, and says, “I like the hopbeast. With the...the tuber paste and mixed vegetation. It’s...it’s more expensive, though, and I’ve only had it once, but if you want something that’s less, less expensive, the grubloaf is really--”

“No, dude, hit me up with some hopbeast.” Whatever the hell that is. “Hey, I’m pretty sure it’s hella gauche for me to ask, but I seriously have no idea: what’s tipping etiquette for trolls? Is twenty percent cool?”

The guy stares at you. He looks like he’s processing something very large, very slowly. Eventually, he says, “Tipping?”

And you realize something, all at once, and it’s startling and disquieting: at some point, you aren’t sure when, _you_ became a part of the trolls’ fucked-up caste system. You’ve spent pretty much all your life not really thinking about it, and when you did you thought it was weird and wrong, that people shouldn’t be judged by their skin color, their hair color, and definitely not their blood color. Meanwhile, people like the Condesce have kept chugging dutifully along, steamrollering over people like your waiter, who have, in turn, internalized the fact that _not lowblooded_ automatically equals _higher than me_. You have, without your knowledge or consent, been inserted into that nebulous area between jade and violet, and this dude is just treating you accordingly.

The lowblooded credo states: highbloods don’t worry about the price, but they _will_ become agitated if they think you’re trying to cheat, swindle, or overcharge them. And at the same time, they’ll become agitated if they think you’re implying that they can’t afford something. The serving of highbloods is its own reward, at least partially because highbloods don’t tip.

And you...you’re just some schmuck from downtown Houston, a shitty DJ with no real career options and no hope of moving forward in life. You can’t even claim that you come from money: both your parents were middle class number crunchers, your mom a secretary and your dad an accountant, and both of them dead, now. You got $10,000 and the truck from their combined will, and most of that money’s gone towards your turntables, your speakers, your livelihood.

Was your livelihood. Up until Meenah club-brawled into your life.

“Tipping means I pay you extra,” you explain, feeling like you’re talking to a kid, all gentle and kind, even though this dude is like a head and a half taller than you and he’s got horns the size around of your clenched fists. “For serving me.”

“I...it must be a human practice, I’ve never...”

“I figured.” You pull your wallet out of your pocket, dig through for a twenty and press it into the guy’s hand. He stares like you’ve just handed him a live baby chicken with no explanation whatsoever. “I guess, maybe I’m thinkin’ the Little Empire could use some more human practices.”

And you know that’s practically treasonous, even this far from Tyrian House, and he knows it, too, but he still crumples his fist around the bill and shoves it into the pocket of his apron, eyes wide with disbelief. “I’ll get your order right in for you, sir.”

As it turns out, hopbeast is sort of like rabbit, but with an almost nutty flavor beneath the unfamiliar spices, and the tubers are, predictably, close enough to potatoes that you don’t notice the difference. And even though your waiter called it ‘expensive,’ it’s probably way cheaper than you could get at any human restaurant. While you eat, you pull Aranea’s card out of your wallet, re-reading the address. You think it might actually be somewhere around here, and the night is still young.

When your waiter returns to get your dishes, you show him the card and he says, “Oh, the blood-reformists? Their office is four blocks south, you can’t miss it.” He ducks his head. “They come in here, sometimes. Them and the hemononymous one.” You have no idea what that means. “Sometimes, I give the little yellowblooded one a discount. He always makes me laugh.” Okay, you understand _that_.

You pay with your debit card, and then dump every last cent out of your wallet onto the table. It adds up to another twenty-some dollars, and it’s not nearly enough, and you don’t think it ever will be, but you catch a glimpse of your waiter’s face before you leave and it damn near breaks your heart.

Let any asshole call you a cold motherfucker, but don’t ever let them say you’re incapable of kindness.

From the restaurant you walk down the street for a while, counting blocks until you reach an intersection. A McDonald’s sits next to a troll-operated bank, and there’s a hivestem across from that, and on the side of the street opposite you, there’s...

There’s a troll in a sandwich board.

It’s one of those things that you drape over your head so that you can show everyone what date the world is ending, or how they should eat at Joe’s, stuff like that. Except this guy’s board says:

**END BLOOD DISCRIMINATION**

**SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WARMBLOOD PERSONHOOD**

**MEETINGS EVERY SAT. 12am-9pm**

Below that is the address on the back of your card, so you figure you’re at the right place. You cross the street at the next light and then jog up to the guy with the board. He’s wearing a helmet and some sort of yellow bodysuit, and most of his face is covered by a tinted red and blue visor. “Uh, ‘scuse me...”

“I’m busy!”

Jesus, you can practically hear the all caps in this guy’s voice. And he’s got some sort of weird inflection, too, intermittent and halfway between lisping and stuttering. It came out more as _I’M BUSTHY_ than anything else. You duck your head, but shades plus visor equals limited visibility all around. Add to that the fact that it’s night...

You try again. “Is this where SAWP is meeting?”

The guy jabs his finger at the sign. “You hafta go inside!”

You guess that makes sense. You shrug, then step around sandwich board-guy and head on in. You have the fleeting thought that you need to go to sleep, get some rest before work...but then you remember that you don’t have work. Shit.

The inside of the SAWP headquarters is one of those refurbished offices, where you can still practically see where the cubicles used to sit. It’s been remodeled to be a much more open area, with sections of it cordoned off with beaded curtains, folding screens, and what looks like a blanket fort in the corner. It’s nice. Homey, even, for an office rental. There’s a tiny area by the door that you assume is a waiting room, and a desk near that, occupied by one Aranea Serket.

The door opens again, and sandwich-board guy sidles in behind you. He’s surprisingly stealthy for a dude covered in cardboard and a bright yellow spandex bodysock, but he pretty much ruins that image when he opens his mouth and shouts, “I want my cards!”

Aranea looks up, noticing first him, and then you. Her expression brightens, and she gets up from behind her desk and comes around to take your hand, giving it two good pumps before letting go. “Mr. Strider! Oh, I was hoping you hadn’t forgotten us, you could be such a wonderful ally to our cause, and of course Meenah has been acting up considerably in your absence, I believe in the hope that one of us would contact you and force a confrontation between--”

“I want my _cards_!” Bodysock’s shout is accompanied by a fizzling _pop_ sound, and then he starts to cry, great, honking sobs, yellow-ish tears running down his thin cheeks. Aranea abandons you immediately, going to his side and trying in vain to shoosh him.

“Mituna, come along, ‘Tuna, that’s good, let me go and get your cards for you...”

“No! No no no no!” He flails his arm out and smacks his hand against the wall, then stares at his fingers like he’s forgotten how to feel pain. You’re pretty sure he’s not crying about the goddamn cards, whatever those are. While Aranea wrings her hands and starts calling for “Latula! Latula, could you...”, you step around her and put a hand on this Mituna guy’s arm. He’s a little shorter than you, and this close you can see a little through his tinted visor. His eyes are wide open, but his pupils are all fucked up, changing size indiscriminately, and his eyes are surrounded by so much scar tissue that it’s amazing he can open them at all. You can’t tell what color they are through the visor, but you wonder what the hell happened. You wonder if the scars are part of the reason this dude seems a little...scattered.

“Hey,” you say, and Mituna stops crying in order to glare at you.

“Out of my fuckning face, bulgemunch!”

“Woah, not cool, bro. What’s up with the tantrum? Anything I can do to help?”

Mituna’s face wrinkles up, and he sniffles. “I can’t...I tried...I wanted my cards, but they’re all over there and so I reached for them and it hurt and so I sthtopped. And I remember before and it didn’t hurt and I am so fuckning _angry_ and _sad_ and...”

“Hey, it’s cool. It’s fine to be, y’know, angry, or sad. That’s totally fine.”

He stares at you. “Huh?”

“Yeah. Everyone gets that way. You just gotta remember that you aren’t the only one in the room.”

“In the room?”

“Yeah. You’re freaking Aranea out, see?”

Mituna peeks over your shoulder; Aranea, true to form, is still wringing her hands, and Mituna looks stricken. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry I’m freakning you out, I’m thorry...”

“It’s all right, Mituna,” she says. “I just...didn’t want you to hurt yourself. More than you do normally. Would you like me to get your cards?”

“Yes please.”

“It’s cool, I got ‘em already.”

This is a new voice. You remove your hand from Mituna’s arm and move back as a tall troll girl with short, sharp horns and a teal and black bodysuit emerges from behind one of the folded screens. She’s carrying a deck of cards with her, the top one decorated with a fanciful image of some sort of monster. She gives them to Mituna, who sniffs loudly and then wraps himself around her, kissing her neck and cheeks. “Hi ‘Tula,” he mutters. “I fucked up.”

“Aw, ‘Tuna, no...”

“Nah, don’t baby the dude.” Both girls look in your direction. Mituna keeps his face buried in Latula’s neck, but he’s listening, you can tell. “Seriously, don’t. I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with his head, but don’t lie to him to spare his feelings or whatever. You fucked up, dude. You threw a tantrum over a deck of cards. _But_. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Learn how you fuck up. Learn how not to do it. People are always fucking up, that doesn’t mean you can’t get something out of it.”

You lower your shades a little in his direction; you figure that as far as gestures of trust go, that one’s pretty damn big for you. He doesn’t look at you for a long time, but, when he does he straight-up gawks at you. You know your eyes are a little freaky, but you sort of figured that maybe trolls (who have fucking _purple eyes_ sometimes, holy shit) would be a little more...you aren’t even sure. Tactful, maybe. Discreet.

“Holy shit,” he says. “I thought those _were_ your eyes.”

 _And then there’s this guy,_ you think, and slide your shades back up the bridge of your nose. Not a moment too soon, too, because there’s a _crash clang bang_ from over at the far end of the room. There must be another door back there, maybe to outside, maybe to another office, because you’re pretty sure that Meenah would never go so long without announcing her presence. Which is precisely what she does now as she storms in, plastic bags hooked over her arms.

“Peixes in the house, beaches!” she shouts, and Mituna, looking significantly less like he’s on the edge of sobbing, lifts his head. He waves a little, and Latula kisses his temple. It’s pretty obvious that they’re in love, or whatever the troll version of love is, and while weird, bodysuit-wearing dudes with card game fetishes don’t really do it for you, good for them all the same. You know a lot of humans wouldn’t be that dedicated if they had to take care of their partner like that.

You turn around, and Meenah stops in her tracks. Trailing behind her is yet another troll, a dude in tight pants, sunglasses, and a ridiculously large grey sweater. He furtively scuttles behind one of the folding screens while Meenah drops her bags and runs at you, full-tilt and emitting the highest-pitched noise you have ever heard in your life.

“What the hell, Meenah?”

“Stop sthouting pondchum nookmunch!”

“Mituna, that was _uncalled for_! Meenah, stop, do not do--”

She socks you in the arm. She was originally aiming for your face, you’re pretty sure, but maybe, in deference to Aranea’s presence, she changed objectives at the last second. As it is, your whole shoulder goes numb for a truly disturbing amount of time while Meenah gets all up in your face, fins flared out and barracuda teeth bared.

“You didn’t fuckin’ _call_ ,” she spits.

Mituna starts clapping. You do the only thing you can think to do in this situation: slowly, solemnly, you reach up and press your fingertip to Meenah’s nose.

“Boop,” you say, and her eyes cross to focus on your finger. Her fins lower.

Mituna starts to cackle as he claps. Latula says, “C’mon, ‘Tuna, you want to go play some rad Fiduspawn?”

“Yeah! Rad!”

“The raddest, babe.” She takes Mituna’s hand and they walk (together, you note, neither leading the other) off to the back section of the office, where Meenah and her besweatered companion just came from. Aranea retrieves the bags that Meenah dropped, peering into them.

“Ah! Our supplies!” She starts pulling out...markers? Rulers, AA batteries, what looks like half of a gutted computer, a small roll of bubble wrap... ”Excellent! Now we can commission our mobile communications devices.”

“Cell phones,” you correct, wondering how the hell anyone is going to make a sophisticated machine out of that pile of junk. But, then again, maybe you could melt the bubble wrap down, make some sweet, clear plastic outer shells, and you could cannibalize those computer parts for the necessary components...there’s got to be a hard drive in there...

“We ain’t got the _cash_ ,” Meenah says. “I can’t dip into my birth fund much more without alertin’ someone.”

“Then we will have to use some of our donations.” The way she says it, you figure donations are a big thing around here. They probably don’t get much, considering the stranglehold the Condesce has on most of the lowblood enclaves. The Little Empire can’t be that much different. “We simply cannot continue our endeavors without a reliable way to communicate over long distances, and, sad to say, human technology is both behind the times and ridiculously expensive. Though the history of their struggles with computing technology is fascinating, especially considering that this planet contains all the materials and creatures required for simple apiculture networks...”

“We got it, we got it.” Meenah shoves the second bag into your hands. “Make yourself useful, Bro, hold these while I get our glorious leader.”

You figure she means sweater guy. You pull what seems to be a jar full of bees out of the bag. It buzzes and vibrates faintly in your palm. Good thing you aren’t allergic, else you’d be freaking out right now.

(You’re kind of freaking out anyways, since you’re holding a _jar of live bees_.)

Meenah disappears behind the folding screens while Aranea continues to rifle through the contents of her bag. She eventually takes the bees from you (thank God), and you’re left wondering what insects have to do with making cell phones. Troll tech is weird, you’ve known that ever since you first saw a picture of one of their old automobiles, a wheeled centipede-looking thing with its thorax hollowed out and replaced with wires and plush seats. They’re forced to use human-style cars these days, biomechanics not having passed any sort of ethics board, but that doesn’t change the fact that where humans have carved out their empire with steel and gold, trolls decided to get a bit more...earthy.

You don’t get much of a chance to contemplate, because Aranea has already sidled up alongside you. She peers at you over her glasses and says, “I was not joking, you know. Meenah developed quite a fixation on you after your heroic actions.”

“I’m hoping it isn’t the fixation Ahab had with Moby Dick.”

Aranea raises her hands, a _who knows?_ gesture. “I can’t presume to know her intentions, but I daresay that it isn’t as caliginous as it seems.”

“Caligari-what?”

“Oh! Are you unfamiliar with quadrant-based romance?”

“ _Romance_?”

“Troll romance is divided into...”

“That’s quite enough.”

Oh, thank you Jesus and all the little children, you’ve been saved by grey sweater guy. You’re...vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of Meenah romancing you. Not because you’re uninterested in ladies at the moment (though that plays a part in it), but because you’re pretty sure she would be able to at least semi-convince you otherwise, and you don’t need a crisis of self on top of everything else, thanks very much.

Grey sweater has emerged, along with Meenah, from behind the folding screens. Presumably they had a hurried and whispered conversation before reappearing, because Sweater looks worlds less skittish than he did before. He’s taken on an almost pompous air, one of those _I both know more than you and know how to apply my knowledge better types_ , though what he knows more _about_ is still a mystery. He holds up his hand like he’s about to start proselytizing.

No power on earth could brace you for the torrent of bullshit that comes out of his mouth.

“Aranea, I will thank you not to subject our new guest to your overtures or explanations; please be mindful of your romantic privilege and remember that humans do not practice quadrant-based romance and indeed may not be interested in learning about it at all! I am certain that there are many humans who would find the notion of multiple romantic partners at once not only disturbing but also potentially triggering, and whether you have met one human before or several makes no difference, all humans are different just as all trolls are different, and where one human may identify as panquadrant panromantic, to put it in more comprehensible terms--and I apologize, sir, for using potentially triggering language, but one does what one must--another may identify as--”

“But what if I don’t identify as a dude,” you say, and Sweater stops dead in his runaway monologue traintrack, looking stricken. Shit, you broke him. “Nah, just fuckin’ with you, one-hundred percent all-American Strider-brand beef right here.”

“Oh,” Sweater says, and clears his throat. He’s like a cat that, having been caught doing something goofy, starts to wash itself and pretend that nothing happened at all. “I...I see. Regardless, thank you for notifying me of my own privileged statement. Now, to business. Meenah informs me that are the one who prevented her from dire injury a few weeks ago?”

“She had some cracked ribs, I wouldn’t call that protecting her from...”

“Aw, can it, basshole.” Meenah has loped up to your other side, so that now you’re sandwiched between attractive troll ladies. Aranea grins at you out of the corner of your eye, sort of secretive and slyly-knowledgeable. No no no no _no_. You gently extricate yourself from her. With Meenah, you aren’t so lucky. She clings to you worse than a barnacle to a really slow-moving whale, and you’re unsuccessful in ridding yourself of her.

 _This is a switch_ , you think. _Normally it’s the guy bugging the girl._

(You also think _this is sort of nice, she’s reely cool considering the time of year_.)

(And then, _Did I just make a fucking fish pun in my own head?_ )

Sweater clears his throat. “I have an extremely important question for you, then.”

“Lay it on me.” _Anything to distract from potentially lethal troll girls viciously attempting to flirt with me_.

“Why did you help her?”

Bam. Loaded question already. You’re pretty sure every future interaction you will ever have with this guy hinges on how you answer, but the problem is that you _don’t have any answers at all_. Sure, you could say that you don’t think it’s right that she was getting the shit beat out of her, that the bouncers never would have gone that far with a human, let alone a human _woman_ , you could say that there’s already plenty of injustice in the world and if you can stop even a little bit of it then you can sleep easy at night...

But the truth is that you’re a freakish, puppet-loving weirdo who used to build robots in his spare time, who lives alone in a shitty apartment and who, up until two weeks ago, maintained an equally shitty job doing something that you used to love, but now have grown to hate. Before you met Meenah, you couldn’t have given a rat’s nutsac about troll rights. You barely even thought on the fact that they were being oppressed. It was just one of those facts of life, something you never really questioned because it didn’t really apply to you: rich, white dudes got the power and the opportunities, while blacks, Latinos, trolls, and women got shit on. And while you’re hardly rich, you’re definitely a dude, and you’re not a minority or a troll, either.

And you don’t have even the first idea as to why you went out of your way to help someone that you have never, in your life, had reason to connect to.

Except now you do.

“I don’t know.” Sweater stares levelly at you from behind his sunglasses. “I liked her dancing. And she’s got good taste in music.”

“Damn right,” Meenah says in your ear. You feel uncomfortably aware of how cool she is against your side, and how it’s not as bad as you thought it would be, and you remember 8th grade and how you always knew that something was _wrong_ , every time you kissed a girl, felt the bump of growing breasts against you as your then-girlfriend snuggled greeted you with a hug and a smothering liplock, how it had felt _off_ somehow. And then you had discovered that it wasn’t just tab A into slot B, that guys could like other guys more than girls, even if it wasn’t _acceptable_ , you realized that it wasn’t just ‘option one or fuck off and die,’ but options one or _two_ , and that had just...clicked.

And now Meenah is clicking, too, but you can’t tell if it’s in a ‘I want to hang with her and be in each other’s back pockets’ or a ‘I just want in her back pocket’ sort of way. And the second one is problematic because she probably a. deserves better than some asshole like you, and b. will kick your ass because you’re...well, an asshole, and the first one is problematic because you just aren’t _good_ at it. You aren’t good at having friends, as evidenced by the fact that you live alone and have no contact with anyone but your clients and the people at the corner store where you get all your TV dinners. You don’t even keep in contact with your family; you know you’ve got two half-sisters out there, but you don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. You don’t even know if they’re still alive.

And Meenah will probably beat the shit out of you if you get close and then distance yourself over and over, like some sort of fucked-up yo-yo. Really, it all comes back to ‘she is going to tear me a new one.’ Best not to make any sort of move, in any direction, until you’ve got this self-crisis thing worked out.

(You have, essentially, given up on there not being a crisis in the first place. And it only took you, wow, like ten minutes? Go you. Today seems to be the sort of day for really awkwardly-timed revelations, but the least you can do is hold off on the navel-gazing until you aren’t being interrogated by a teenager swaddled in roughly an entire sheep.)

“Very well,” Sweater says, and finally removes his shades (they’re nowhere near as cool as yours). His eyes are _holy shit_ bright red, like candy apples, or blood on snow. They make your eyes look like pink cotton candy in comparison, and you’ve got an actual genetic condition (or so your parents told you, fuck knows you weren’t ever tested for anything).

He extends his hand in what you assume is an extremely awkward and hesitant attempt at a handshake, so you oblige him. He’s way, way warmer than Meenah is, almost uncomfortably warm. “My name is Kankri Vantas. Welcome to the Society for the Advancement of Warmblood Personhood. If there are any triggers that you would like me to make note of, please inform me at your earliest convenience; I have a pre-made list of triggers if you would prefer to simply circle them rather than speak them aloud, or if your triggers are not present you may add them to the list so that I may be more conscious of them in the future. Furthermore, if you would care to inform me of your preferred pronoun, name, nickname, and romantic inclination I will also--”

You’re pretty sure you’ve just joined some sort of cult.

Still hanging off your shoulder, Meenah gives you a thumbs-up and then rolls her eyes in Kankri’s direction.

Well. You guess, as far as cults go, this isn’t so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: writing a believable Mituna is incredibly difficult. I'm fairly certain I haven't managed it yet. Suggestions and comments are welcome in that regard.


	5. Bro Strider, Great White Hero

“Hold it up. Higher. _Higher_. Okay, there, stop-- _Meenah, stop_.”

You study the cards that Mituna has laid down on the floor. Through the opening in Latula’s blanket fort, you can see Kankri and Meenah attempting to hang something up outside. In deference to the sweltering Houston summer, the front door is open and you can hear almost everything they’re saying. The sun has just begun to set, and Mituna sleepily shuffles his hand, dandelion-fluff hair flopping over his eyes.

It’s been a week since you unofficially joined the Society for the Advancement of Warmblood Personhood. In that time, you’ve done precisely dick-all, unless you count learning how to play Fiduspawn.

You take an Oogonibomb out of your inventory and arrange a Host Plush nearby. Mituna’s sleepiness evaporates immediately, and he watches, strategizing and plotting. He’s way better at this game than you are, partially because he’s been playing it longer and so understands it better, but probably also partially because you still flinch whenever the Fidusucker emerges from its leathery casing.

Bracing yourself, you roll the Oogonibomb towards the Host Plush. It cracks and sprays yellowish ooze across the blanket walls; a wriggling, crab-like thing emerges from the orb and scuttles over to the Plush. You give it a wide berth as it latches onto the poor creature’s mouth and...does its thing, you guess.

“C’mon,” Mituna mutters. “C’mon Fluffabuns, come _on_.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

“You’re going down Bro, I’m gonna kick your _ath_.”

“I’m not getting another Fluffabuns.”

“Speaking of...”

“If you start talking about your girlfriend’s fucking waste chute or whatever I am going to punch you in the face.”

“Well I wasn’t fucking her _waste chute_...”

You’re saved from further description of what Mituna and Latula get up to in the bedroom by the Fidusucker emerging, with a gross squelch and another spray of fluids (and cottony white stuffing, R.I.P. gentle plush), from the Host Plush’s midsection. It is not, as you predicted, another Fluffabuns. Mituna looks crestfallen.

“ _Aw_.”

“What is it?” It looks sort of like a...miniature pig with spikes. It’s about the size of your hand, making it a medium-class Fiduspawn, you _think_. There was something about the game almost being banned but then they put size limits on the monsters, and Latula explained it all to you but you sort of...zoned out.

“Porkupin,” Mituna says. “Fuck.”

“Is that seriously its name?”

“Yeth.”

“Fucking _Porkupin_.” Mituna stares at you, uncomprehending, and you finally, _finally_ pull yourself out of your funk enough to throw your cards down. “Okay, that’s it, I’m done.”

“Huh?”

“Game over dude, you win, you win everything, the winner is you.” You struggle to your feet, wading through a sea of blankets and pillows and God only knows what else has been lost in this rat-trap. Porkupin attempts to wriggle after you, but Mituna grabs it and holds it carefully with his clawtips. It’ll collapse in five hours, reform into an Oogonibomb, mutant DNA recombining to form some new and equally terrifying mini-monster, but you don’t really care because you are bored, you are so bored that you’re going to start shitting your own colon out for entertainment if something doesn’t _happen_. You stomp outside, where Kankri and Meenah have, after the predictable squabbling and swearing, finally managed to get an incredibly shitty sign up above the doorway. Though it reads _Society for the Advancement of Warmblood Personhood_ , it practically screams _come inside and have your kidneys stolen_. Considering some of the neighborhoods around here, that is a distinct possibility on peoples’ minds.

“Yo, sweater,” you shout up, and Kankri looks down from his stepladder. Looks down his nose, the prick, but you’ve gotten used to his ranting, and now you just tune him out when he gets going. “When are we actually going to _do_ something?”

“Pardon me?”

“You know, start a rally, partake in a sit-in, something, _anything_.”

“If you would merely direct your attention upwards, you would note that--”

“I’m not talking about fuckin’ _signs_.” The thought that, at this moment, Meenah Peixes is the most logical and level-headed person around is nearly physically painful to you, but it’s to her that you turn and make your appeal. “Shit isn’t going to change if you just stand on a street corner shouting about it. Come on, you’re smarter than that.”

“I will thank you not to use neurotypical-abelist language in...”

“Bro’s right, Kankri. Much as I hate to say it, you been sittin’ on your flippers waitin’ for things to come to _you_ , an’ it ain’t none of my business, but...”

“Of course it’s your business, you are our _figurehead_...”

“I never said I wanted to be a part of your shitty revolution!”

“ _Chill_ , dudes, calm the hell down.” Sunglasses and fuchsia eyes swivel to stare you down, but, to your credit, you don’t wilt. “Look, you want the red carpet treatment? Official declaration of intent? Do I have to sign something? ‘Cause congrats, you’ve got yourself a new member, long as it means I don’t have to lose another round of Fiduspawn. First thing’s first.” You stretch up onto the tips of your toes and hook the sunglasses off Kankri’s face. His hands immediately fly to cover his eyes, peeking down at you, bright red irises shrunk down by fear-dilated pupils. You know he’s terrified, you’ve heard the whole spiel from Aranea, how mutants are unacceptable, how as soon as they’re old enough to contribute to the species they’re quietly and efficiently _culled_. You hate that word. Culling is something you do to cows on their way to the slaughterhouse. ‘Cull’ is a word for animals, not for sentient creatures with plans, futures, dreams, and certainly not for Kankri, who cares so much for everyone that he loops right back around to pushing them away again.

People like Kankri practically _require_ friends, or at the very least allies, but life is a two AA broskis not included sort of deal.

(That he has somehow, despite all his bluster, managed to surround himself with people like Latula, Aranea, Mituna, and, yes, Meenah was at first like a rough stone lodged in your shoe, because if someone like Kankri can find and keep friends and you can’t, then what does that say about _you_?)

You help Kankri stumble down from the stepladder, half-blind and spewing an incomprehensible stream of trigger-term laden bullshit. Meenah moves as if she wants to smack someone, either you or him, it might not even matter, but you get there first, grabbing Kankri’s wrists and holding them baby-bird delicate in your fists, drawing his hands down from his eyes. He blinks in the dim moonlight, like a newborn animal, hair flopping a little over his forehead. He’s not perfect. No one is. But if Meenah, for whatever reason, is the figurehead of this little revolution, then Kankri is the mastermind. And not just because he’s a mutant, either.

“You can’t keep hiding behind sunglasses and grey sweaters,” you tell him. “You gotta let it all hang out.”

“Let go,” Kankri says faintly. He seems frozen, awed by the fact that you’ve dared to touch him, to step over his boundaries, and you don’t want to be an asshole, but let’s face it, you’re pretty much an asshole. But sometimes it takes an asshole to get the ball rolling. “Please.”

You let go. You’re gonna be honest, you don’t buy like half of the asshole trigger jamboree that Kankri can pull out of his bile sac at any given moment, but you _do_ recognize when a dude doesn’t want to be touched. “Can you like, dig up any literature you’ve got on this shindig? I know just the place to start.”

Kankri, wonder of wonders, doesn’t protest. He seems a little dazed as he wanders back into the office, leaving you and Meenah alone. You raise an eyebrow at her. She lifts and lowers her fins, like a shrug, and bares her teeth.

“Figurehead, huh?”

“Didn’t ask for it.”

“Nah, I didn’t think so. Why you, though?”

She flaps her hand. “Troll thing. You wouldn’t get it.”

“I’ve been dealing with troll things all week. Try me.”

“I said you wouldn’t _get it_. Step off my gills, Bro, ‘fore I step on yours.”

You don’t have gills, but you figure pushing isn’t going to help anything, even if you really, really want to. Luckily, Kankri emerges again, with Mituna in tow and a metric ton of paperwork. He divvies it out amongst you, keeping a hefty stack for himself.

He’s wearing a red sweater this time. Meenah eyes it with distaste. “Ain’t gonna wear your sign?”

“I don’t wish to be culled on the spot, thank you.”

Signs are still a relative mystery to you. You know it has something to do with blood lineage and personality types and when trolls are born, and you know that at least some of them correspond to the human zodiac, but beyond that you’re clueless. You don’t even know what Kankri’s sign _is_. You can tell it’s some sort of issue, though, because Kankri has gone all sullen and weird about it, or maybe that’s just about you touching him earlier. You know he doesn’t like it, but sometimes you’ve got to soldier through what you don’t like.

“Can we get snacks?” Mituna, refreshingly, either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about the frosty mood between you and his friends. “Fried grublegs!”

“After,” you promise. “Where are Latula and Aranea?”

“Speaking with some of our contemporaries, who by dint of their blood color have been gifted with privileges that the hemoarchy denies warmbloods despite their--”

“Just say they ain’t _here_ , Kankri, Jesus.”

“ _Snacks, douchelard, let’s go!_ ”

“You heard the man, Vantas, hike up your blusterpanties and let’s get moving.”

“We’re wastin’ moonlight either way,” Meenah says darkly, then glances at you, at the stack of papers in her arms, at you again. _I don’t want to go_ , you think, is what she wants to say. _This isn’t my fight, I have better things to do_. But the problem with that is that it isn’t true. This is everyone’s fight, whether they know it or not, whether they’re carrying a sword or a pamphlet or nothing at all. It’s only poetic irony that you, weird, puppet-obsessed DJ Strider, are the first human to stumble into this. And you might not be best-suited for the job, but damnit, even if you aren’t getting paid you’re going to throw your whole self into it.

You loop your arm through Meenah’s, startling her fins into alarmed little points. Mituna grabs your other arm, and together you march off down the street.

You get a lot of stares. That’s only to be expected; Kankri’s sweater is an eyesore, you’re dressed in an ironically bright orange tanktop with ‘BEEF CAKE’ written across the chest, and Mituna’s bodysuit is, as always, bright eye-fucking yellow. But you can tell the point at which the stares turn from curiosity to alarm, to interest, to fear. Trolls start to stare at Kankri’s face rather than his sweater. Lusii, like that white penguin-thing you saw when you first set foot in this neighborhood, guide their young charges in a wide arc around you, only to have to scuttle after them when the children inevitably want to follow you.

Meenah gets her fair share of stares, too, but these are...different. Deferential, sort of. Passer-by lower their heads, avert their eyes, incline their upper bodies almost like they’re bowing. She perks up under the attention, but also seems mildly disconcerted about it. Like it’s something she thinks she’s supposed to want, and maybe wants on at least _some_ level, but which she has no idea what to do with once she has it.

The staring serves your purpose, though. While people are too gobsmacked to avoid you, you pass out the pamphlets. Small, shitty printer-paper foldups with _SAWP_ in huge, black letters on the front, an address and a mission statement, and not much else to save on expense. The group’s funds are limited; Aranea works full-time as an archiviscerator, the troll equivalent of a librarian, and doesn’t make much money. Latula does something with notarizing for highbloods. You don’t even know what Kankri or Mituna do when they aren’t at the office.

And you still don’t have a job. You’ll need to get on that soon, your savings are dwindling and you’ve resorted to living off of instant rice and the unidentifiable-yet-cheap meat leftovers from the butcher around the corner from your apartment. It doesn’t help that every time you pass a restaurant in this neighborhood you remember the brownblood with the floppy hair who had never been tipped before, and if you could go in each one and show them what things _could_ be like you would, but you _can’t_.

Except now you can.

You hit the restaurant you visited before, asking if you can tack up a pamphlet on a messageboard somewhere. The manager, an oliveblood guy with thin, spindly horns, firmly refuses, but both he and the brownblooded waiter take pamphlets for themselves. ‘Strictly off the clock,’ as they say. From there you move down the street, handing out pamphlets and ignoring shouted insults, _mutant_ and _freak_ and _mammal-blood_ , mostly from the upper tiers, the greens and jades and a few scattered teals. The warmer the blood, the more inclined they are to just...look away.

Kankri keeps his head high. His red eyes are filled with righteous indignation, fear, sorrow. That’s the kicker. He’s _sorry_ for these fucks. Even the ones who shout at him and threaten to report him for culling, he’s sorry for them. Meenah nudges him and says, “Pityslut,” though not unkindly, and Kankri answers, “If not me, then who?”

There’s tragic poetry to that. The only one who cares enough to pity _everyone_ is the one that no one wants to pity themselves. If you’re using the weird troll version of pity, anyways.

A few blocks down the way, troll hivestems and Alternian signs gradually begin to morph into apartment complexes, laundromats, and a KFC that’s seen better days. You find a dog park where there are some benches and a single, tired-looking man with a labrador, and you all take seats and shuffle through your remaining pamphlets. Mituna, surprisingly, has managed to give out the most, probably because in the company of the rest of you he looks almost normal. He crows about this, says you owe him snacks, and you help him take his helmet off so the thin breeze can ruffle his hair.

Kankri stares at the pamphlets left in his lap. There can’t be more than a dozen.

“Hey,” you try, and he looks up at you, bright, bright red eyes in the dark. “Doing okay?”

“I...”

He tilts his head back, looking at the moon, huge and looming and lusus-white. Did Kankri have a lusus? Did he have anyone to take care of him at all? You don’t know how this ‘mutant’ thing works. What about Meenah? She’s never mentioned...anyone else. She’s always at the office, or with Aranea. What does she do when no one else is around?

Does she have any other friends at all?

“I am fine,” Kankri says, and closes his eyes, and breathes in deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Bro suffers from Great White Savior Complex. He's the sort of person who thinks he can--and, indeed, is entitled to--save everyone. Even when there's nothing to save (see: Mituna and Latula). This WILL be addressed later. He does realize what he's doing, eventually. :)


	6. Bro Strider, As Seen on The Outsiders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay. Have a long-ish chapter!

“So, what’s the deal with Meenah?”

She doesn’t want to talk about it. Hell, _you_ don’t want to talk about it. Her issues are her own business, and while you like her, you don’t feel like pissing her off to the point that she stabs you. The problem is that you sort of _have_ to know. She’s the figurehead, Kankri’s the leader, and you, somehow, have become the organizer, the guy who Gets Stuff Down. It’s not like you’re short on free time in which to fill this role, but if you’re going to do it then you want to do it right, and that means knowing the people that you’re working with. You’ve got Kankri and Mituna down pretty well, having sat through a lecture and won at Fiduspawn, respectively, and Aranea and Latula aren’t around as much, so you’ve got an excuse, there, but Meenah...

Meenah should be blatantly obvious. But she isn’t. It’s bothering you.

Latula lowers her book. You would have asked Aranea, since her and Meenah are ‘best gillfronds,’ quote unquote, but she’s working late at the library, and Latula is here hanging out with her boyfriend, and so your choices are Kankri, Mituna, or her, and you don’t even need to think about your first choice.

“Meenah’s got a lot of deals,” she says. “You’re gonna have to be specific, dude.”

“Kankri keeps calling her our figurehead.”

“Oh, _that_.” She marks her place with the scrap of pamphlet she’d been using for a bookmark and sets the book down in her lap. Behind her, Kankri helps Mituna repair the blanket fort, which sustained heavy damage after Mituna made an off-color joke in Meenah’s direction. “I mean, it makes sense, seeing how she’s the heiress and all.”

“The what?”

“Oh, I guess humans don’t learn about this stuff? _Lame_. Like, we’ve got the Condesce, right? And the hemospectrum says that she’s in charge because she’s got the raddest blood.”

You’ve honestly never really thought about it, but that makes sense, you guess. “What color’s her blood, then?”

“Fuchsia,” Latula says, and even as she says it you realize that you already knew, because you remember Meenah staring up at you in the club, her bright, bright eyes, like tourmaline set in silver. You understand, now, though you suspect you don’t get the full effect of it because you’re human and you weren’t raised with this shit. Latula sees the comprehension on your face and nods. “Yeah, it’s all kinds of messed up. Like, I’ve read that on Alternia? She probably would have been culled as soon as the Condesce figured out she was alive. She’s real lucky to have been born here instead. She just got cut off from her birth funds.” She turns her head, looking suddenly, achingly sad. “For a while, at least. Mituna is real good with most kinds of tech. Him and his highblood bro Kurloz hacked the system at Tyrian House looking for all kinds of biznasty stuff. ‘Tuna only got the passwords for Meenah’s funds, though. Bitch had security measures we didn’t know about.”

You think of Mituna’s eyes, the pupils fucked-up and cycling through constant dilation and constriction, the bright silver scarring around the sockets, how he shrieks when he forgets his helmet and just as quickly flies into a rage if you try to help him, how _apologetic_ he is afterwards. You wonder what he was like before, if Latula was with him then or if she got with him because she knew he needed her, but down that road lie too many issues and you just don’t have the time to sort through them all. Maybe later. Maybe.

“That’s why Kankri needs her,” you say. “Because she’s rich.”

“We’d need her even if she wasn’t. Kankri calls it, um, an internalized hemoarchy? Even if the system sucks, people are still going to follow it instinctively, ‘cause it’s what they’re brought up with. If there’s a new Empress who’s cool with lowbloods, it’ll make the transition from shitty to non-shitty that much easier.”

“Don’t let Kankri hear you call them that.” She cracks a sharp-toothed smile.

“Yeah, see? Even I do it. And I’m, like, mad in pity with Mituna, so you know that shit runs deep.”

You tilt your cap back and scrub a hand through your hair, grumbling. “So she’s the literal figurehead. As in, head of government. Great. Y’know, this would be so much easier if I wasn’t dealing with other bullshit on top of everything else.”

“Huh?”

You’re hesitant to share your troubles with her; you don’t want to sound like a whiny bitch or anything, after all. But if you don’t talk to _someone_ you’re going to explode, and Latula is...she’s pretty cool, even if she does get hella insecure over everything. “The stunt I pulled with Meenah got me blacklisted from every club in Houston, pretty much. DJ Strider is no more. Shuffled off the mortal coil. Ex-DJ. Et cetera, et cetera. I’ve been lookin’ for another job, but no dice so far. Hard to coordinate day jobs and night hobbies.”

“Oh, Bro, that’s super easy. Ask Kankri, he’s got a sugar daddy in the dayclub business.”

“Latula, I would point out that your language is both morally and psychologically offensive, but you have previously shown yourself as being uninterested in my lessons on triggering verbage and how to avoid utilizing it in everyday speech with other beings, thus I will simply inform you that Ampora is _not_ my ‘sugar daddy,’ forgive my language, and that he is a valued ally to our cause with access to a multitude of resources that we are not privy to by dint of our blood colors, such as greater funds, information, trolls in positions of political power who might show themselves as potential allies in the future--”

“Sthut up!” Mituna stems the rising tide of nonsense by throwing a blanket over Kankri’s head. The two tussle for a minute, Kankri growing audibly more upset, until finally he manages to throw his assailant off and emerges, gasping and red-faced (literally) from his cottony prison.

“Uncalled...for,” he wheezes. You offer him a hand and extract him from the wad of blankets; Mituna remains where he is, rolling around and cackling like a hyena on helium.

Latula watches the whole thing with a wide, not entirely pleasant grin.

“Who’s Ampora?”

Kankri heaves the biggest sigh you’ve ever heard from one pair of lungs. “He is a _friend_ , and nothing more, though I have no doubts he wishes otherwise. Nevertheless, he has, quite admirably, respected my vow of celibacy and attempted to limit his propositions in my presence...”

“Cronus and Kankri, sitting in a tree, P-A-I-L-I-N--”

“ _Enough_ , thank you, Mituna, that was beyond uncalled for. Why are we even talking about Cronus, anyways?”

Latula scratches her nose. “Strider needs a job. Meenah got him canned everywhere else.”

“An unfortunate occurrence, but I fail to see how I...”

“Aw, come off it, Kanks, anyone with a thinkpan can see how flushed Cronus is for you. He’d pull down the moon if you asked for it. And if Bro’s half as good as Meenah says he is, all he’ll have to do is spin a few records, play a few mixes, and he’ll be hired on the spot!” Kankri purses his lips. “Come on, you’ve been planning a visit to Aquarius for like three weeks now anyways. You know he won’t deal with Aranea if he thinks he can get you to come instead.”

“Insufferable,” Kankri mutters, but you can see the way he relents in his posture, the slump of his shoulders and the twitch of his mouth. “Fine. But we’ll need to hurry if you expect to see him today. Once the sun rises, he’ll be too busy...” Kankri’s nose wrinkles. “...mingling.”

“Sure, not like I have anything else to do.” You go to collect your jacket, ironically heavy for this time of year, but Goddamn, leather makes you look badass, and you got it at a flea market two years ago for like twenty bucks. You leave your cap behind, but keep your shades, because if you’re auditioning for a DJ job then you’ve got to make an awesome first impression. Latula fusses with your hair for a minute; Mituna tries to pinch your ass. You tweak his horns until he’s giggling and shrieking in protest, and the four of you spill out onto the nighttime streets, ready for action.

Kankri has once again donned his grey sweater, but the sunglasses are gone, at least. A few trolls stop you as you walk, and, surprisingly enough, they aren’t all interested in flinging slurs. A healthy percentage have heard, whether through your pamphlet initiative or through word of mouth, about SAWP, and are interested in the off-caste mutant running it, even if they aren’t automatically willing to sign up. Kankri is admirably to the point when this happens. No one goes screaming into the night. You count it as a success.

Aquarius is a mid-sized building a few blocks south and then a few more blocks east of SAWP headquarters, decorated with neon urns pouring flickering teal-blue electric water. There are a few trolls and humans hanging around outside the entrance, which is guarded by a truly massive dude in full mirthful regalia. Like, black and white face paint and skeleton bodysuit and everything. He automatically holds up a hand as you approach, but hesitates when he sees Kankri.

“Hello, Kurloz,” he says politely. “Is Cronus in?”

The mime makes a complicated series of gestures that make no sense to you whatsoever, but which Kankri seems to have no trouble deciphering, since he nods. “Will you please tell him that I have a proposition for him?” The mime points at you. “Yes, he is integral to it.”

Mime troll disappears inside, the door closing and locking behind him. “Fuckin’ lowblood mutant,” you hear, muttered direly off to the side. One of the waiting patrons has stood, a midblood, probably green or teal, with a half-drunk smile and horns like corkscrews. Seems to you like he was just waiting for a chance to start some shit, and if it wasn’t Kankri, it would have been a fight in the club. You’re tense already, prepared to defend Mituna and Kankri, Latula can probably take care of herself... “You’re that freak trash startin’ shit against highbloods, aren’t you?”

And to your surprise, Kankri stares straight back at the guy and says, “Yes. I am.”

Must be surprising all around, because that stops the guy in his tracks. Then he shakes his head and advances again. “Fuckin’ mammal-blood, shoulda killed you before you crawled out of the birthing caverns, you’re a goddamn abomination, you know that? You’re the reason good trolls get culled, ‘cause they hear your _lying whoreson talkflaps_ and get all uppity, fuckin’ pissbloods thinkin’ they’re good for anything but powerin’ ships...”

At this, Latula bristles, grabbing Mituna’s hand even as she snarls and bares her teeth. The midblood’s friend steps up, probably to try and stem the tide before it rises over everyone’s head.

“Jefala, come on, dude, it’s not worth it...”

“Fuck you, it ain’t worth it, my kismesis is _dead_ you cullbait!” He’s fucking fast, you’ll give him that. He’s up in Kankri’s face, fist balled up and pulled back, and you’re reaching for a sword that isn’t there, shit, where did you put your pocket knife, the blade’s the size of this asshole’s dick but you can gouge out his eyes--and Kankri is just standing there, swaying lightly, he’s just going to take it, holy shit, the steel-chromed _balls_ on him--

And then suddenly the troll isn’t standing there anymore. He’s lying on the ground, teal pouring from his shoulder, and your ears are buzzing. The air feels full of electricity, and everyone...everyone looks terrified.

You turn around.

There’s a new guy standing in the doorway, tall and lean as a feral cat, with those massive seadweller ear-fins and slicked-back hair. There’s a huge scar across his forehead, three jagged lines not unlike the sign of the club’s namesake, and he’s holding the biggest fucking gun you’ve ever seen. It looks like the sort of thing people used to hunt whales in the 1800s, except the tip of it crackles with white-hot light, and also it’s purple and blue, who the hell paints their gun purple and blue? This douchebag, apparently.

“Try to assault _my_ friends on _my_ property? Ya fuckin’ dumbass, what made you think that was a good idea?”

The teal doesn’t say anything. He just keeps shaking his head, over and over, like he can’t believe what’s happening. Kankri has put his face in his palms, hiding his eyes.

“Get the fuck outta my sight,” the seadweller snaps. “And don’t come back. I see you again, I’mma set my bouncer on you.” The mime, you’re assuming. It’s enough of a threat to get the teal moving; he scrambles to his feet with the help of his friend, the one who tried to stop him, and together they limp off into the night. Blood puddles on the ground where the guy fell; Kankri is the only person who looks affected by what just happened.

And you. You’re kind of freaking the hell out. You just watched a guy get _shot_. Not fatally, judging by how mobile he was, but still. Fucking _shot_.

Seadweller douchebag has disappeared. The mime beckons you inside while a cluster of ochre and greenbloods looks on in envy. You feel like you’ve entered an episode of The Twilight Zone as Kankri leads the way, yourself and Mituna just behind, Latula taking up the rear. You wish Meenah was here.

That’s a funny thought. And one you’ve been having more and more often as of late. In fact, the more you hang out with her, the more you want to figure out how she ticks. What makes her laugh. What she likes. Why she doesn’t want to be a part of Kankri’s little club.

You’re going to have to ask her.

The club is like every other themed club across the country: booths in darkened corners and along the walls, tables in a sectioned off area, a truly massive dance floor. And like every other themed club, it takes its chosen decorative motif way too seriously: huge glass tanks line the wall, floor to ceiling tall and swarming with fish, with doors that lead, presumably, to back hallways where the tanks themselves can be accessed. The walls are decorated with huge murals of marine landscapes; the VIP tables are decorated with inset tanks containing live coral and tiny squid. The dance floor has been painted to look like Hokusai’s The Great Wave of Kanagawa. It’s the most elaborate clusterfuck you’ve ever seen.

And Kankri is shaking. With fear or rage, you can’t tell, but you take a step closer and make a motion as if patting his back, but without making any actual contact. He seems to appreciate the gesture, if nothing else.

“Breathe, Kankz,” Latula says. “We’re here for a reason.”

He obeys, taking deep, shuddering breaths as the mime leads you all past the dance floor to an unmarked entrance behind and to the left of the bar (which is decorated with seashells and a mother of pearl overlay, you notice). From there you’re taken down a short hallway to another door, which opens up into a mid-sized office. The change in decor is startling: there are no oceanic themes in here. Posters of Elvis Presley and Eddie Cochran are tacked up on the walls; there are shelves littered with records, bits and pieces of musical instruments, _actual_ instruments, signed baseballs and gloves, and a snowglobe with the Statue of Liberty inside. The desk is in a similar state of disarray, with books and paperwork in the process of cascading onto the floor in a very slow, eventual sort of way.

The seadweller sets his gun down on a rack by the door and takes a seat behind the desk; you get your first proper look at him, without the shock of seeing someone _shot in the fucking shoulder_ in the way. He’s taller than you, maybe even taller than Meenah, but whipcord thin and with the stupidest faux-greaser hairdo you’ve ever seen. He looks like an extra out of _Rebel Without a Cause_ , except with zig-zaggy horns and a weird scar. He’s also wearing ridiculously tight jeans and a white tee with a purple sign on it, presumably his. And, oh no, oh God, he’s taking out a comb and actually dragging it back through his hair, this can’t be real life, when did you get transported onto the set of _The Outsiders_?

No one else is saying anything. _No one else thinks this is hilarious_. Which is ludicrous, because it very clearly is, and the only thing keeping you from laughing like a hyena right in this douchebro’s face is the fact that he might give you a job and you really, _really_ need one.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Lowblood rabble, what can ya do? I mean, not like you, babe, you ain’t even on the spectrum but at least you got class. How can I help ya? Not every day you come and see good ol’ Cronus.” Suspicions confirmed: this is, in fact, the ‘sugar daddy’ Latula mentioned. You feel an abrupt pang of sympathy for Kankri. But hey, what do you know? Maybe he’s got some redeemable qualities. Or a huge dick. Something.

No, wait, Kankri is celibate. The no touching thing, too. Something to do with his ancestor? You aren’t quite sure, he doesn’t talk at length about it, which is a change, for him, so you know it must be deeply personal.

Speaking of, Kankri appears to have finally rallied himself, and he stares at Cronus with a mixture of annoyance and...disappointment? Maybe. “I’ve come to make a proposition.”

Cronus leans forward on his desk, grinning, shark teeth and too-large eyes. Deep sea monster eyes. “You mean a favor. Admit it, babe, I got somethin’ that you need.” Oh fuck, he waggles his eyebrows, this is just getting way too--

“He doesn’t need your bulge, shthitlick!”

Mituna’s outburst is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You cover your mouth with your palm and wheeze helplessly for a few seconds, paralyzed with laughter while Cronus looks at first startled, then disgruntled, and then, finally, intrigued.

“Kurloz, my man, get some drinks for our guests, won’t ya? And a juice box or somethin’ for ‘Tuna here.”

“Fuck you, I’m not a fuckning wiggler!”

The mime gently takes Mituna’s arm, so gently, in fact, that you suspect there might be something more than just platonic whatever going on there. But since Latula doesn’t seem to mind--indeed, goes along with Kurloz and Mituna without any fuss whatsoever--you also suspect that it has something to do with weird troll romance, which you still don’t fully understand.

This also has the effect of leaving you alone in a room with Troll James Dean. Well, Kankri is here, but he’s...

...Glaring?

“That was entirely unnecessary,” he says, and you know that tone, that is the tone that says _I am sick of your bullshit and I am going to do something about it_. Cronus visibly wilts, and mutters something that sounds like “Thought you’d be impressed.”

“I was not. And if you ever harm another person in front of me, _because_ of me, again, I will sever all ties to you immediately. I will never contact or see you again, I will not so much as _say your name_ for the rest of my life. Are we clear?”

“He was gonna hit you, babe!”

“Perhaps he had a right to! Perhaps those who suffer the consequences of my actions deserve a chance to express themselves!”

“By _hittin’_ you?”

You clear your throat, and both trolls snap to attention. Kankri looks ruffled, but mostly in control. Cronus just looks petulant. “Don’t mean to break up the party or anything, but should I leave, or...?”

Kankri sighs. “No. No, of course not, your plight is the reason why we’re all here. Cronus, in apology for your actions, I will thank you to give Mr. Strider here a job.”

“ _What_.”

“I’m all for blackmail, but maybe it’s not smart to try and blackmail the dude with the huge-ass gun, Kankri.”

“He wouldn’t _dare_.” Holy shit, that was an honest to God hiss right there. In defense of you, no less, so if you needed any proof that Kankri likes you being around then that was it right there. And furthermore, Cronus looks, if not intimidated, then at least impressed enough to pay attention. He straightens up in his chair and tucks his comb back in his pocket and says, “Well, any human that’s important enough to get my babe here’s hackles up is an interestin’ human to me. What sort of job you looking for, chief?”

At last, your cue. “Nothing fancy. DJ gig.”

“To the point. I like that in a guy. You any good?”

“I have been informed that he is simply the best there is.” Stunning vote of confidence from Kankri, there, but Cronus snorts. You know why: reputation makes up the bulk of the hiring process when it comes to DJ jobs, but when you get right down to it you still need more than word of mouth. You need some honest, actual talent to back up your ironic leather jackets and sweet shades.

“Kankri darlin’, you wouldn’t know a good DJ if the Condesce threw one at you. Come on out to the floor, Strider, and you can show me your hotshot moves.”

The moment of truth. You breathe slow and deep and even as Cronus slinks out of his chair and lets the two of you out of his office. He winks at you as you pass him, wow, _creepy_ , and that plus the near-fetishizing of a lame 50’s human subculture pings basically all of your _douchebag predator_ alarms. But Kankri, for some unfathomable reason, trusts him, so you decide, magnanimously, not to say anything.

The club must have opened in the time that you and Kankri were negotiating/arguing, because the dance floor is swarming with trolls and, lord above, _humans_ as well. Figures that the highblood-run joint is more inclusive than anything humans have to offer. You scan your surroundings until you spot a familiar bright yellow flash near the bar. Mituna is hanging off of Latula’s shoulder, cheerfully nuzzling her neck and cheek while she nurses a scotch on the rocks and Kurloz watches. Every so often his attention visibly switches to the bartender, a short-horned girl with an olive green shirt who is being assisted by a frighteningly tall, arrow-horned dude with a ponytail and welding goggles.

“DJ booth’s right there.” Cronus gestures towards the back wall, where a medium-sized cubby has been cordoned off with black drapes. “Tell the blueblood in there that I said you’ve got the next set.”

Okay. You can do this. You definitely can. You start to wade your way through the edges of the dancefloor, past gyrating trolls and human dudes making sly comments about _check out the rack on that one_ , and it’s only as you’ve almost reached to DJ booth that you realize that you have no CDs. Or vinyls. Or anything.

You were expecting an interview, some questions about your experience, maybe; not a full-on trial run. And a DJ minus his equipment is worth precisely jack shit. You’re going to have to work with the other guy’s stuff, which is going to make things ten times harder for you and a hundred times worse-sounding for the audience. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, and _fuck_ , just for good measure. Cronus set you up. Whether he did it purposefully or not, he’s still set you a thousand feet high on the Failure Pedestal and now he expects you to dive head-first into Shame and Awkwardness Lake.

You push aside the black curtains...

...and nearly turn right back around with the full intention of never looking back.

The booth is _alive_. Well, alive in the sense that it looks organic, with fleshy tendrils crawling up the wall and draped along the floor, connected at various intervals to machines that buzz like insects and pulse neon green in the dimness. A blueblood sits in a weird, pod-like chair with reddish, veiny cords wound around his fingers and disappearing into his hair. Lights flash everywhere, pulsing to the rhythm of the music overhead. You’ve never seen a set-up like this in your life. You probably never will again, if the human government has anything to say about it; biomechanical tech is like five kinds of illegal, and even if it weren’t you sincerely doubt that the Condesce would be cool with sharing her super advanced alien sciences with lowly humans.

The blueblood finally notices you, snarling wordless in the dark. You raise your hands, painfully aware of the fact that you really need to start carrying some weapons around, and say, “Cronus said that I get the next set.”

“Some useless human with my tech? I don’t think so. Get out before I snap you in half.”

“That’s fine, dude, I mean if you want to ignore a direct order from your boss, who, might I add, has a _gun that’s size of half my body_ , that’s totally cool. I call dibs on your stuff, so just let me know when those suicidal urges start feeling overwhelming.”

The blueblood growls, and then, grudgingly, begins removing cables and flesh-wires from himself. If they were buried in his skin, you can’t tell where, but then again he’s like seven feet of rippling muscle, so it’s hard to tell. He deliberately bumps you as he leaves, hard enough to bruise and throw you to the side a foot and a half. You ponder the merits of pursuing him and punching him in the horns.

Maybe later. You have a set to do, and like three minutes to figure out how all this alien tech works.

You take off your jacket and your shades, wrapping the latter in the former and setting it all off to the side. The pod-chair seems as good a place to start as any, so you take fifteen seconds to prepare yourself, make peace with God, et cetera, and then say “Fuck it,” and climb inside.

It’s like sinking into jelly. That is honestly your first thought, that you are now ass-deep in neon green jelly. The chair squishes as you try to figure out how to get comfortable, and then abruptly takes the situation out of your hands as the tendril-cord-vein things the blueblood had been wrapped in suddenly reappear, very neatly making certain that you will never be comfortable with anything even remotely chair-like ever again. They loop around your wrists and up your arms, alive only in the sense that they’re mobile and they’re connected to a power source; you can feel them slithering through your hair, and then--

And then the lights--

And the _sounds_ \--

You can feel the music. The music in the club and the music you have in your head, the constant percussion-rhythm-static that you hear in every surrounding sound every damn day, car tires on asphalt and someone’s janky generator and pots clanging and laundry flapping on clotheslines, urban symphony playing out all around and everywhere and you have always lacked the funds to make other people hear it. But now you hear it again, in the thud-thud-thud of heartbeats and feet stomping and clothes rustling, clinking glasses and bottles, talking, laughter, so much laughter.

This isn’t a turntable. This is a goddamn _recording studio_.

You picture a synth beneath your hands, and you can _see_ it, you can practically feel it, smooth metal and wood casing. The cords tighten around your forehead, but you barely notice, you’re too busy feeling out this cool virtual instrument, and, oh look, the blueblood had a collection of pre-mixed songs, extended editions and remixes, Prince and Public Enemy and Logic. You don’t need CDs or vinyls. You don’t need his music.

You _are_ the music.

The blueblood’s set ends, and you pick up smoothly where he left off; you lose track of what’s happening outside, of what time it is and what you actually came here for, lost in the sheer joy of not only mixing, but _composing_. You take samples from everything, The Beatles and Phuture and the Hallelujah Chorus; your only limits are what you know and what this tech can manage to spit back out at you, and you mix and then remix as you spin out fat, thick synth percussion and stuttered, heavy drops.

This is what you were missing. This is why you didn’t go to college, why you didn’t choose to build Army robots for a living, this is why you kept getting up day after day even though you knew that the only clubs that paid were the ones you hated most. This gorgeous music is your _life_.

You emerge from the DJ booth what feels like weeks later, shaky and weak at the knees but still flying high on the adrenaline of having access to more music than you’ve ever seen in your life. There’s a small crowd of people waiting for you, and the comments and whispers fly fast and furious: _who’s that? Do you know him? Some human....What was he doing in there? Was he the one playing? Oh my gosh, that music was so sweet I..._ The previous DJ is there, too; he looks...distressed. You give him a little wave.

Cronus and Kankri are where you left them, deep in heated conversation when you approach; you catch Kankri saying “I’m not _yours_ to--” and then he notices you and cuts himself off. Cronus looks less skeezy, you’re surprised to see, and more...impressed? Respectful? Hell, you don’t know.

“Looks like the human’s got good taste,” he says, and you wipe the sweat from your brow. “Never seen anyone take to the PhonoGrub software that easy. You must’ve at least used the grubnet before.”

“The what?”

The impressed look deepens, now tinged with astonishment. “Seriously? You never...? Damn, chief. _Damn_. Forget favors, Kankri, I’d hire this guy whether you told me to or not. You got yourself a contract, Strider. Come back tomorrow ‘round six-ish and we’ll talk payment.” He winks. Okay, no, skeezy is back. _Way_ back. “An’ maybe I’ll see you at one of Kankri’s little meetings, yeah?”

And just like that, you have a job again.


End file.
